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Finding Gold in Found Video

Joe Pickett (left) and Nick Prueher (right) introduce another video at a recent Found Footage Festival in Brooklyn, New York.

Courtesy of the Found Footage Festival

Coming soon to America's West Coast: a unique film festival designed to appeal to those who enjoy the voyeuristic embarrassment of catching a neighbor playing air guitar or relish the contrived story lines of corporate training videos.

The Found Footage Festival is filled with home movies, bizarre personal videos, industrial films and bad public-access shows, all discovered in such prime locales as thrift stores, dumpsters and garage sales.

Based in Queens and started roughly a year ago, Found has toured to sold-out houses in several cities, including Chicago, Minneapolis and Austin. A West Coast tour is planned; organizers are appealing for help.

The show includes everything from bad elementary-school talent shows to rednecks skinning catfish alive. There are bad corporate training films and graphic penis-pump instructional videos. "They get the best reaction from people," admitted co-curator Joe Pickett. "It never fails to deliver."

The festival was started by two childhood friends from Wisconsin, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, who began collecting and sharing found videos in high school.

"When people would come over we'd pop in certain tapes," Pickett said.

Besides garage sales, friends of friends and Goodwill (a plethora of good videos), Pickett's top-secret source of footage was his former day job at a video-duplication company.

"A lot of the times I'd get some industrial training videos in there that were way too good to pass up," he said. "So I'd toss an extra little videotape in there and push record and make a copy for myself."

Both Pickett and Prueher quit their day jobs (Prueher was the head researcher for the David Letterman show) to pursue the world of video oddities full time. While filming a documentary called Dirty Country – centering on a country music singer named Larry Pierce who distributes his horribly filthy CDs at truck stops around the country – they ran out of funds. To raise cash for the production, they started the Found Footage Festival, screening a mix of the videos they'd been showing in their living room.

"I think part of the charm of our show is these are videos not intended for a mass audience. When a mass audience is watching it, you realize how ridiculous a training video actually is," Pickett said. "You're allowed to laugh at it, whereas if you're sitting in a break room, you're not allowed to laugh at it."

Pickett feels the same way about home movies. "It's like the real reality TV. Their own people are working the camera, and you see a slice of life. We're not necessarily laughing at these people; we're not necessarily laughing with them. It's funny because we've all had these home videos, and we all know how hokey they are."

Proving to be a Found Footage Festival favorite is It Only Takes a Second, a safety video put out by Federated Mutual Insurance.

"It's made with the intention of scaring people into being safe," Pickett said. "So whenever they have some new group, like a factory, who has Federated Mutual Insurance as their insurance company, for legal reasons they make all the employees sit down and watch the stupid video."

What follows is a three-and-a-half-minute video of people falling off tall cranes and running their hands through table saws. But it doesn't end there – the tragic accidents escalate.

"It's unbelievable. It just gets better and better as you watch it. It ends with a car crash and just a huge explosion."

Then there's the joy of a Wendy's training video that features a rapping crew trainer.

"They have this kid," Pickett said. "It's his first day on the job flipping burgers. He has to watch this video, and out from the TV screen is like this rapping guy. He comes out and grabs him and takes him to this other world and he raps him the instructions on grilling a hamburger. It's just jaw-droppingly stupid."

A home movie, Memorial Day 2000, is described as an "instant classic."

"I don't even know how to categorize these people," Pickett said. "They're in their 20s and they take their parents' RV out to this resort area and ride their four-wheelers. There's couch burning, there's mooning the camera, there's puking, there's everything you can imagine. That one just kills. People love that one."

Found at a garage sale in Central Wisconsin is a video called Kirk's 40th Birthday.

"It's basically an unedited day in the life of Kirk and his two buddies and his wife and his two attention-starved kids," said Pickett. "We always preface it by saying, 'This is for the connoisseur of found videos.' It doesn't hit you over the head like the Wendy's training video does; it's more like a fine wine. You have to appreciate it and let it soak in."

"I think Joe and I would be both be a little star-struck if Kirk or any of his pals showed up to a Found Footage Festival," added Prueher. "We've watched his home movie so many times that we feel like we know Kirk personally, and let's face it, he's really the hero of the video."

On the rare occasions when Pickett and Prueher have met their video stars, the two haven't been disappointed. Bob Kampra, who appeared in the insurance video as the guy who got his hand caught in a table saw, heard they were screening his work at the Found Footage Festival in Minneapolis and showed up at the show.

"We had him come up onstage and re-enact the table-saw scene," Prueher said. "Bob told us that they only had one fake rubber hand to destroy, so he had to get it right on the first take."

To Pickett and Prueher, this sort of insight is equivalent to VH1's Behind the Music. Still, they have to be careful about who finds out that they're showing their videos.

"I'm not sure Kirk would be too happy to learn that he and his friends can be seen smoking pot on the big screen at every Found Footage Festival," Prueher said. "And, truth be told, I like to keep some of the mystery about the origin and back-story of these videos. Sometimes our speculations are far more interesting than what the truth probably is."

They're always on the prowl for new videos (which people can submit through the festival website). A new favorite, which Prueher acquired while working at Letterman, has stormed its way into regular rotation.

"It's an Arnold Schwarzenegger video from a carnival in Rio. It's unbelievable what's on this video," Pickett said.

Shot on the heels of Schwarzenegger winning the Mr. Universe competition in the '70s, this travelogue-gone-wrong features our now beloved governor going wild in Rio.

"A little while back, dozens of women came forward and accused Schwarzenegger of sexual harassment. I think at least three or four of them are on this video," Pickett explained. "He gets up and does this dance with them. And he grabs their ass and they clearly don't want their ass grabbed. It's amazing he got into office with this video out there. Nobody's seen it!"